Ignition & Battle of Karda Nui: Race against time. Race for Life

The Kanohi Ignika, the Mask of Life. Most who touch it are eternally cursed in some way, those who are destined to wear it... well... aren't much better off. We have 15 small comics from DC (yeah, how many people here knew that DC did the BIONICLE comics?), so let's not waste time, because the characters don't have a lot of time. Ignition, and the Battle of Karda Nui.

I'll start with the context. In the lore of this series, there is something almost akin to a god called Mata Nui, at this point in the lore, he has been put into a deep sleep, however this sleep is also killing him, and the only way to bring him back to life is the Mask of Life, which is hidden on an island called Voya Nui. Ignition is basically an abridged version of the events of 2006 and 2007, so if I do ever cover the story and lore in more detail (which I admit I'd love to do at some point), I'll be coming back. Until then, this is an abridged version of an abridged story. To make things worse, as with the films, I'll be using language from the lore. I'm not a teacher, you're better off looking here for what specific words mean: http://www.bzpower.com/story.php?ID=6272

Six thieves known as the Piraka have arrived on Voya Nui to steel the Mask of Life, and have enslaved almost all the Matoran on the island to do it (I'll tackle why they look that way another time, again, abridge of an abridge). Eventually six Matoran from Mata Nui (only two have been named in the movies) arrive on the island transformed by a Red Star into the Toa Inika for reasons described elsewhere (seeing a pattern yet?) and set out to free the Matoran, stop the Piraka and retrieve the Mask of Life, all the while on the deadline of Mata Nui dying, and this isn't even all of the work, because for the rest of it, we have to go deeper.

Even though I know they're heroes, that shot makes them look scarier then the FNAF animatronics

So, after stopping a 7th Piraka who became fused to the mask and a spider who grew, and then became a dragon... because logic? The Mask of Life flies out of the volcano it was in and into the water around the island, because for some reason the Mask has its own mind... I don't know either. The Mask falls into the waters of Mahri Nui, a portion of Voya Nui formed when the island rose from the water (hold that thought). This water also mutates most of who live there, which is why it is also known as The Pit, a prison for "the most dangerous outcasts" according to promotional videos for the year, including the main villains of 2007, the Baraki. Upon arriving in the waters themselves, the Toa Inika try "holding their breath" while they look for a Mask in an ocean, which is the dumbest idea I've ever herd, but thankfully the Mask agrees and turns them into the Toa Mahri, giving them the ability to breath underwater. So now it's a race against the clock to

1. Get the Mask of Life while avoiding armies of sea creatures, six warlords, a resurrected security guard and doing so with the help of their enemy (don't ask)
2. Get the Matoran of Mahri Nui to a safe spot on Voya Nui with the inhabitants of Voya Nui
3. Destroy the thin bit of land holding Voya Nui up so that it can plug the hole to where the next arc takes place
4. Revive Mata Nui while swimming faster then an island

Easy, right?

Why don't we use underwater prisons again?

I'm going to put plot on hold as we go into a change of pace for the next four comics. Art wise, its hit and miss. Everything looks nice... but flat and thin at times. characters even look like they're in pieces at points. It's very dark and it works well considering the stakes involved. It can be a bit hard at times to see characters , especially in the Mahri Nui arc when it comes to characters like Hali. Story wise, these aren't the best if you want to know what's going on. They're summaries, not the story.

So. We've gone from land, to sea, to the sky... that's under the sea... Here's the story for Battle of Karda Nui. Karda Nui is basically the heart of Mata Nui, and its here where the Toa Nuva (the heroes of Mask of Light) will awaken Mata Nui. To do it, they must take to the skies, stop the Brotherhood of Makuta (long story short, the main villain of the first two films was the leader of it, his actual name is Teridax). Now what I'm about to say is spoilers, unless you've seen The Legend Reborn, as Karda Nui is the place right before that. Mata Nui turns out to be a giant robot, with Metru Nui being inside the robot, which is basically a mini universe. Makuta takes over the robot and the universe inside, seals Mata Nui in the Mask of Life and fires him into space.

"Stop the bats, stop the bats. Make them go and not come back"

The same problem is here in terms of story, though this one isn't as much of an abridge (as far as I can tell as I haven't read the full story, the books were rare here). This one is more fleshed out, but is still lacking the context required to get the full effect. The art work is also a lot brighter here then it was in Ignition, everything stands out. To me, this is actually better then Ignition in terms of looks.

"Take off, at the speed of sound"

If you want to know what happened in 2006, 2007 and 2008. You're better off going here as far as I can tell http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/files/sites/bioniclestory.com/www.bioniclestory.com/default.aspx.html simply because of the context required, something that got worse as the series went on. Are they still fine to read, yes as all of them are really short, you could breeze through them in no time. As for what's coming up next, well the next three weeks are going to be super hero themed. With Batman: Arkham Asylum, followed by Batman Arkham City, and then Avengers: Age of Ultron. I don't have a link for the next comic arc review, but it will go onto Twitter once it's ready. I'll see you all in Gotham next week, unless I get sidetracked with something else in the mean time.